CHAPTER XXIV

THE SACKCLOTH OF SPRING VALLEY

Number five roared eastward through the town that day on time. No one stepped down from the train, and no one took pa.s.sage on it. Spring Valley had dropped back into its customary uneventfulness so far as the outer world might tell. It was but a little hamlet on the long line of fields and trees that lies along the way of Number Five.

Hurrying on toward the vast confusion of the metropolis, Number Five gave up its tenants to be lost in the cosmic focus of the great city, where all about were the lights and the anxious faces. The city, with its tall, dentated outline against the sky--wonderful, beautiful, alluring; the city with its unceasing strife, its vast and brooding peace, where walk side by side the ablest men, the most beautiful women of all the world, all keyed to the highest pitch of effort, all living at white heat of emotion and pa.s.sion, of joy and of sorrow--the city and its ways--we may not know these unless we, too, embark on Number Five.

In the silk-lined recesses of one of the city's greatest hostelries, where anything in the world may be bought, there sat, soon after the arrival of Number Five at the metropolis, the traveling man, Ben McQuaid of Spring Valley, and a little milliner from a town east of Spring Valley which Ben McQuaid "made" in his regular travel for his "house."

He had bought for her now the most expensive viands, the most confusing and inspiring wines that all the city could offer. Soft-footed servants were attending them both. They were having their little fling. To the city that was a matter of small consequence.

Nor, when it comes to that, was all the city itself of so much consequence. The great fact is that, while Ben McQuaid and the little milliner were speeding east on Number Five, at midday, when the dusty maples of Spring Valley still were motionless under the heat of the inland summer day--old Nels Jorgens' wife was walking across the way with a covered dish in her hands.... In the dish, you say, there was only some crude cottage cheese for Aurora Lane? Was that all you saw?

Seek again: for you, too, are human and neither may you escape the great things of life, nor ought you to miss its great discoveries.

Mrs. Nels Jorgens had on no hat. Her gown was G.o.d knows what--gingham or calico or silk or cloth of gold, who shall say? She was a woman of fifty-eight. Her sunken stomach protruded far below her flattened and withered bosom as she walked. Her stringy hair was gray and uncomely.

But her face--now her face--have you not seen it? Perhaps not in the city. But the little supper in the city (not yet come to the time of sack-cloth) was by no means so great a thing as the service of Mrs. Nels Jorgens, the wagon-maker's wife, when she carried across to Aurora Lane a dish of something for her luncheon.

And others came. From the byways of this late cruel-hearted village came women, surely not cruel-hearted after all. They seemed to have some common errand. They were paying off the debt of years, though what they brought was not in silver dishes and there was no bubbling wine. So far from calling this a merciless, ignorant town, a hopeless town, at noon of that day, had you been there and seen these women and their ways, you would have called it charitable, kindly, beautiful; though after all it was and had been only human.

Over the breathless maples there seemed now to hang a stratum of another atmosphere, as sensible, as appreciable, as though a physical thing itself. The sympathy of Spring Valley was awake at last--after twenty years!

"'Rory, I just thought I'd come over and bring you a dish of this--I had some already made. I said to myself, says I, if we can eat this all the time, maybe you can just once"--it was the old jest, humble but kind. It sounded wondrous sweet to Aurora Lane--after twenty years.

After these had gone away again, a little awed by the white, sad dignity of Aurora Lane--even nature seemed to relent. Ben McQuaid and the little milliner were cooled by swiftly revolving electric fans yonder in the city. But along in the evening of this summer day in Spring Valley the leaves of the maples were stirred by softly moving breezes done by nature's hand.

"Aaron," said old Silas Kneebone to his crony, "seems like we're goin'

to get a change of weather. Maybe the hot spell's broke at last."

"I'll tell you what I'll do, Silas," said his friend suddenly, straightening up on his staff. "I'll tell you what I'll do with you, Silas. Even if it _is_ goin' to be cool before long--I'll just take you over to the drug store and buy you a drink of ice-cream sody at the fountain!"

"Time comes," he continued after a time, "when a fellow's been feelin'

kind of stirred up, some way--when he feels just like he didn't care a hang for no expense. Ain't that the truth?"

CHAPTER XXV

BECAUSE SHE WAS A WOMAN

The blessed change in the weather came on apace. The sultry air softened and became more life-giving. Folk moved into the open, sat out upon the steps of the front galleries, rich and poor alike, willing to take the air. There was an unusual silence, an unwonted scarcity of callings back and forth across the fences. The people of the town did not care to revive the memories of the last two days.

But the narrow little porch in front of the millinery shop on Mulberry Street held no occupant. There was a light within, but the blinds were close drawn. None who pa.s.sed could hear any sound.

Aurora Lane had sat for hours, almost motionless, at the side of the table where customarily she worked. She made no pretense to read in her Bible now. Her little white bed was unrumpled by any pressure of her body bowed at its side in prayer, although it was her hour now for these things.

She was trying to think. Her mind had been crushed. She sat dazed. It seemed to her an age since these women--these strangely kind-hearted, newly charitable women--had been here. Or, had she only dreamed that they were here? Had it been a pa.s.sage of angels she herself had witnessed here?

She had told Miss Julia not to let Don come to see her just yet. So, though she had heard the great news of his release, she had not met him.

"I'll have to think, Julia," she said. "I don't know what I'll do. I must be alone."

The window of her shop was still unmended. The red hat which had been so long, in one redressing or another, the sign of her wares, now was bent and broken beyond all possibility of restoration. The walls were bare, the furniture was broken. It was wreck and ruin that lay about her, as dully she still was conscious.

Twenty years of it--and this was the climax! What place was there left for her in all the world? As she sat, hour after hour, alone, Aurora Lane was thinking of the dark pool under the bridge, of how cool and comforting it might be. Her bosom rose, torn now and then with deep, slow sobs, like the ground swell of a sea moved by some vast, remote, invisible cause. She had been sobbing thus for some twenty-four hours.

She had not moved about very much today in her household, had not often left her chair here at the table. The mob had destroyed most of her pitiful store of gear, so there was small choice left her.

Somewhere she had found, deep down in a trunk tray, an old and faded garment, its silken sleeves so worn that the creases were now open--a blouse which she had put away long, long ago--twenty years and more ago.

She wore it as best she might; and over the neck where the silk was gone she had cast a white shawl, also of silk, a thing likewise come down, treasured, from her meager girlhood days. This would serve her, so she thought, until she could find heart to go to bed and endeavor to find sleep.... Yes. They may have been of her own mother's wedding finery.

Yes. Perhaps she one day had planned they might be parts of her own wedding gear.... But she had had no wedding.

She had done her hair, with Miss Julia's weeping aid, as simply as might be--as she had when she was younger. It lay now in long, heavy, deep rolls, down the nape of her white neck, along the sides of her head, covering her little ears, still shapely. Her face was white as death, but still it held traces in its features, sharpened and refined, of what once was a tender and joyous beauty of its own--a beauty now high and spiritual. In her time Aurora Lane had been known far and wide as a very beautiful girl; self-willed, yes; wild--but beautiful. She did not remember these things now, not in the least; and there was no mirror left unbroken in the place.

The evening waxed on, approaching nine of the clock, at which time good folk began to turn up the porch chairs against the wall so that the rain might not hurt them if it came, and to draw back into the stuffy rooms and to prepare for the use of the stuffy beds. Fathers of families now drank deeply at the pitcher of ice water left on the center table.

One little group after another, visible here and there on the porches or the stairs along the little street, lessened and gradually disappeared.

One by one the lights went out all over the town. By ten o'clock the town would have settled down to slumber. It was Monday, and on Monday night not even the most ardent swains frequent hammocks or front parlors at an hour so late as ten o'clock in our town, Sat.u.r.day night and the Lord's day being more especially set apart for these usages.

But the light in Aurora Lane's house still burned. She did not know how late it was. The clock on the mantel was silent, for it had been broken by the men who had been there the night before. She sat motionless as a woman of stone. Not even her boy was there--not even Miss Julia was there. She was alone--with her future, and with her past.

It must have been toward midnight when at length Aurora Lane raised her head, turned a little. She had heard a sound! A sharp pang of terror caught at her--sheer, unreasoning terror. Were they coming again? But no, it was not the sound of many footfalls, not the sound of many voices.

What came to her now was a single sound, not made up of others--a low, definite sound. And it was not at her door in front--it was at the side of the house--it was at her window!

It was a slight sound--a sort of tapping rhythmically repeated--a signal!

Aurora Lane stopped breathing--her heart stopped in her bosom. The face was icy white which she turned toward the window back of which she heard this sound, this signal. She thought she had gone mad. She believed that at last her mind had broken under all the trials that had been heaped upon it. Then her eyes began to move about, startled, like those of a wild deer, seeking which way to leap.

It seemed to her she heard now another sound in addition, a sort of low call, a word.... Yes, it was her name:

"Aurora! Aurora!"

What could it mean? It was some visitor come there in insult--it could be no more than that. And yet what impiousness, what mockery! Because, what she heard, she had heard before! It had been twenty years since, and more--but she had heard it then.

Resolved suddenly to brave the worst, whatever it might be, she rose and swiftly stepped to the side door which made out upon the narrow yard.

A man was standing near the door, now turning away from the window--a tall man, slouching down like an old man.

"Who's there?" she cried, intending to call out aloud to give the alarm, but failing to raise her voice above a whisper, such was her fear. Yes, it was someone come here to offer yet another insult.

But the man came into the field of light which shone around her through the door--came closer, reaching out his hands to her. She heard him struggling with his own voice, trying to speak. At last: "Aurora!

Aurora! Let me in! Will you let me in?"

She threw open the door so that the light might come. But it was late.

The town slept. No one saw the light. No one saw the man who entered her door.